


Notes And Connections

by gala_apples



Category: Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman
Genre: Food Issues, Mental Health Issues, Other, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilbur, Pete and Mark notice that Boots isn't quite acting right. It's easy for them to notice, they're not quite right either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notes And Connections

Wilbur watches Boots in the darkness of the cafeteria. He and the second assistant cook have a deal. He'll leave the cash in the bag of whole grain flour, if Alexander fulfills his grocery list. He only has to pay ten percent mark-up, and he doesn't have to sneak away at night. Most grocery stores aren't open by the time he can get to town anyway. Asking his parents is one hundred percent out of the question. He's known for a long time that his parents scorn him, it's why he's here. Every September he's given a wax sealed letter for Mr Sturgeon. Since the first year Mr Sturgeon has ripped it up without reading it. They both know what it says. His parents believe it's the job of the school to restrict his food, so he becomes a _healthy and normal_ young man.

At home he has food hidden everywhere. It has to get more and more complicated every year, his parents search his room when he's not in it. He spends most of the summer in his bedroom so they don't come in. They refuse to look at his jowled face. He always has a calendar count down of the time until he's back at Macdonald Hall, where he's accepted. At home his uncle is the only one who understands him. His parents think Manny's a bad influence, and Wilbur's not allowed to visit.

Tonight when he comes into the cafeteria to pick up his Nutella, rye bread, and peanut butter, Boots is sitting at one of the tables. There's a flashlight standing light up, casting shadows across the ceiling. He's sitting, head down. He has a pen in his hand, but he's not writing.

Before coming to Macdonald Hall, Wilbur felt confident in his sneaking skills. Being at the school, following all of Bruno's plans, he's only become more confident. He moves silently to behind the serving station, stainless steel pans catching the glint of the flashlight. He stays motionless until his feet hurt, waiting for Boots. When the teen finally leaves, Wilbur collects his food and makes his way to the vacated table. The nearest trash can is empty, except for a single balled piece of paper. It reads, "why don't you love me?"

Wilbur thinks he understands. He knows not to say anything. Some secrets are meant to be kept secret. He deals with secrets every time he puts something in his mouth.

 

Pete tends to use Boots as a idea for how hard he has to work. The time Wizzle gave out all those tests, the best he could do was look at Boots to see what kind of answers were right. Pete doesn't want to excel at anything, he enjoys the comfort of being unnoticed. The smack dab middle of five children and just one of a thousand students. It's easy, when no one notices.

He's been writing a lot more in English class lately. Really, it's worrying. If Boots is supposed to be his example of normalcy, and Boots is doing over and above, who can Pete use to check himself?

He has the urge to peer at the blond teen's binder, but that's a bit conspicuous. It'll be better if he can wait until he and a few of the other guys are eating lunch, and he can claim he didn't understand what the teacher was saying. Sometimes it hurts that his friends really do seem to believe he's that stupid, but he'd rather be stupid and unlooked at, then smart and stared at.

After nearly a week of writing, and a week of Pete faking dumb in hopes of getting his notes, he decides it's time for desperate measures. At the beginning of class, he asks to borrow a pen, making sure the three blue Bics are at the bottom of his backpack. When Boots raises his hand to go to the washroom, Pete makes sure to make a commotion about finding one of them. He puts the pen back on Boots' desk while snatching the top piece of paper from the binder. Someone tells him he's an idiot for not looking in his backpack at the start of class. He ignores it. It's a small price to pay, the comments and looks, to make sure he doesn't get an A+ in the class by writing too much, or too well.

The page just has a single sentence written over and over. It would have been common in the year of the Wizzle, but it's weird now. Even weirder is the sentence; "I wish he would notice me" repeated again and again. Pete frowns. Maybe he doesn't know Boots as well as he thought. As far as Pete is concerned, Boots is the classic image of mediocrity. Good but not too good at sports, good but not too good at academics. To want to be noticed, that means that he wants to be better then average.

Just as he's trying to assimilate the idea of Boots being a Scholar or a Jock, he gets it. He knows what the comment is about, and thinks for a second that he really is as stupid as everyone else believes if he hasn't gotten it before now. He shoves the paper into the bottom of the bag, to join the Bics. Boots wants him to notice him, not Pete to notice Boots wanting him to notice Boots.

 

Mark sees things long before they happen. It's like the entire universe is a Rube Goldberg machine of unimaginable complexity, and Mark is the only one that notices how the falling fork pokes the balloon, so the loss of helium drops the rock to the ground. He knows it's not normal to think this way, and does his best to hide it. A very clear part of the machine is telling leads to worried friends leads to Sturgeon, to his parents to an asylum. It's very important that Mark not drop the fork.

Sometimes he gets sick, from all the strings that cross from each student to each other student. Sometimes he thinks they might turn to real fibre, and he'll strangle himself. He has to skip classes those days. It's worth the dish duty though, to not get caught being insane.

Some events are inevitable, and some seem to have A, B, C options. Sometimes it all matters on which strings have crossed that day, and whether the fork is sterling or plastic. It's all very complicated. Mark likes to pick out the truest strings and write his newspaper articles about them. It makes the stories more real, when he can see them connecting.

The problem being, the truer the string, the more likely it is that someone is going to be unhappy when it's shown. After all, the balloon certainly didn't enjoy being popped, did it?

He can see all the strings connecting to Boots. He knows what's happening to the teen, how he's slowly melting down under the new concepts he's been faced with. Boots has become knotted, and there's only one way that he can become unknotted. And that's where the problem lies. The strings are true, but it's a Gordian Knot, and Mark has no knife. He can see all the ways this can end, and all the ways it can have a middle (it's already started, there is no true start, just things happening and happening from the dawn of time). But he can't match which end goes to which middle.

One thing he does know, however, is that Boots is clinging for dear life. And Mark isn't sure if any of them can save him.


End file.
